malinmaskros

I made the last two Alice cards this morning:

 

Of course there had to be a Cheshire Cat!

I managed to find some inspiration for the Alice swap, and yesterday and this morning I made three cards:

  

Very pretty recipe cards for you to download on cardstock, and they are free!

I just now discovered a great artist, Caia Koopman, go look at her work!

A Swedish artist I love, is illustrator Liselott Watkins. I also like Lisa Rinnevuo and Malin Leijonberg, they both paint very "simple" pictures, but very nice.

I see I forgot to post my final cards for the Join the Movement swap, I ended up ditching the cat and Dracula cards i had made, and made another two instead:

 
The first one has movable arms and legs, and the second one has a wheel on the back, so you can change the ice cream flavours.

But the ditched cards isn´t done in vain - I´m doing a trade with the cat on atcsforall.com.

When I saw the Alice in Wonderland swap on atcsforall.com, I had to join - after all, Alice in Wondeland is my favourite at the moment. But somehow, I´m having a really hard time coming up with motifs for this one, I had a mushroom idea, but that´s it. So I made the mushroom this morning, and now I´m borrowing a couple of Alice books on the library, and I saw the Disney Alice this morning. I do need some inspiration!

Last week (my first one counting points), I lost 2.2 kg, that´s almost 5 pounds. And that´s with my period (when I usually gain a couple of pounds)! So I feel very good about that, and I think that´s the best start I could´ve asked for. But somehow the week ended not that good: on Saturday I went with my sister to Stockholm, and in the morning I felt really good - I had lost some weight, I had done my hair and makeup real nice, I was looking forward to a good day. But somewhere in the middle of the day, I was getting blue, and it got worse and worse and finally, I almost started to cry in the middle of a store (and I usually don´t cry at all). It got a bit better, after I had some chocolate (low bloodsugar, I bet), but then, in the evening, I went to my other sister´s house for a girls party, and I had a miserable time, I was bored out of my mind, and I went home at 8.30 pm. So - a good week and a bad weekend.

I have the Join the Movement swap on my brain - I can´t think of anything else, trying to think about clever moving cards. I´ve made three, one last night and two this morning, but I´m only happy about the one last night (the girl one), so I´m probably making new ones instead of the other two.

 


When you pull the tag, you can change the girl´s eyes, she has four pairs. When you flip Dracula down, you can see he has turned into bats. And the mouse is movable, you can drag it back and forth.

My visitor count has sunken drastically lately, obviously not all of you think that ATCs is "da bomb"! I´m a bit curious - are the ones that keep coming old readers that wish for the return of happier days, or are you new, and into those little art cards? It would be fun to know, and it would be fun to know who you are, since most of you mostly lurk.

Anyway. I had an idea last night (the good thing about insomnia...), about moving wings on an ATC, so when I went up this morning, I had to try, and it worked like a charm:



I´m also making another house for Mr. Tumnus, for a trade, and I just joined the Join the Movement swap on atcsforall.com, a swap with cards that move/open/slide/pop or in any other way can be played with. Fun! But it definitely takes a bit more of me as an "artist", now I have to get technical as well!

I love free stuff! I´m sure I´m not the only one, especially when it´s made by the talented Black Apple. Here are some pretty bookplates, for you to download and print!

It´s been said before, both here on the blog and in my life, hopefully I won´t say it again. Today I´m counting points again, trying to lose some weight with the help of my old Weight Watcher material. I have lost waeight on several occasions, but the most was the first time, and since that worked so well, that´s the material I´m using. So I´m paying no attention to some of the newer "rules" (limitless amounts of rice or pasta for a fixed points value, or as many empty points you want within your daily points). The old ways were less forgiving, I have to admit, but perhaps that´s why they worked so well the last time - I lost about 60 pounds, and hope to do that this time too. Because, of course, I have gained all of that, and then some.

 Here I´m almost at my least fat, this is what I aim for. I wat to get even smaller, but at least, I want to be like this.

Actually, I had no plans on trying to lose weight now, I was going to wait until it was time for my gastric binding surgery, and then let that be the solution. But my sister phoned the other day, and said she was going to do it now, and I know I can´t bare to see her get thin, and still being as fat myself. But it feels quite good doing it now, and hopefully I won´t have to go through with the GB later (I´m quite nervous and hesitant, and would be so happy if I could lose weight without surgery).

I did plenty of painting this weekend, so I have a lot of pictures today. The last three for the Triptych swap, the last two for the Narnia swap, and three ATCs for trade:

 
 For the Triptych swap.
  For the Narnia swap.
   
For trade!

About ten years ago, I had a thing for angels, and had quite a collection, I also drew angels, and yesterday I found shose drawings, and today, I made two of those into ATCs. Yesterday I also made yet anotehr cat, but I couldn´t stand to make another Sparky, so it became a Sleepy instead.

 


I also have to almost-finished triptychs, but I don´t want to show them until they are completely finished.

I´ve painted some ATCs, a triptych for the Triptych swap at atcsforall.com (a triptych is so to speak a painting in three parts, as if you´ve cut it in three, and a diptych is a painting in two parts - very fun, actually), an ATC for the Narnia swap (I´m not sure about that one, though) and another triptych for the swap. I have to paint another Sparky (I´m thinking about doing him in black and greys, to shake things up a bit), a couple more Narnia ones (I would like to send in 6, to get 6, I have a feeling they will be fabulous), and some more triptychs. It´s a good thing inspiration comes when I´m painting, or I would be worried...
(out of battery means no pics until tomorrow)

There, pics:

 

I also sent a big pile of ATCs today, I love it when they come dropping down the mail slot, I enjoy paining them, and I can send a big pile cheaper than I used to ship one of my swap packages (not to mention that the products used to make the cards are dirt cheap!) - I think I have found a hobby that´s just right for me!

I had to do a kawaii swap at atcsforall.com:

If what I am painting in fact is zetti, I think it´s a very good style for me, it comes colse to what I sually do, but with a twist (I guess that twist is what separates zetti from other styles). What do you think:

  


Then I tried to do a somewhat realistic nude (as I´ve said before, I don´t do realistic very well...), and since I´ve seen salt being used in watercolour paining, I´ve wanted to give that a try (it didn´t work as I had hoped it would).

 


Today I got a small pile of ATCs in the mail - so much fun!

When I scroll down my posts, I can see it´s a lot of ATCs here now. You know how it is when I get a new obsession - I´m all over it for a while, and then I get tired of it. Actually, I hope this ATC thing won´t pass, or it will be like knitting and crafts - I might not do it for a while, but I always return to it. Doing ATCs is such a rewardi8ng thing - I post them on atcsforall.com, and there aren´t many of them that don´t get snapped up, pretty much the minute  post them. That´s good for my self esteem! Who knows, maybe I can draw (as my family always have told me), which I never really thought that I could (in art class in school I always got a very average grade, my thought on that, is that I never did assignments exactly as they were supposed to be done, I always did them my own way, and apparantly that wasn´t appreciated). Still, I´m not good at realistic painting (I would like to take some classes on that), but I guess I have a style of my own, and that´s not a bad thing, I think. You can always tell a Picasso from a Matisse from a Tulouse-Lautrec, because of their style.

I did some ATCs last night, and then I pile this morning:

 
The flowers are for the host of the Marimekko swap, as a thank you, and the cat is for a trade. I feel that I won´t be making a lot more of these cats, I want to make other things as well...

 
 
 I didn´t know what to paint this morning, but I wanted to so something, so I thought, why not some little people. So I draw two, and then I thought of another, and then another... Maybe I should call them "loving people" in stead of "little people"?

I finally found a good solution on storing my ATCs yesterday, it´s not new or in any way exciting, but very practical. Simply a binder with plastic sleeves holding 9 cards (your average trading card sleeve). I didn´t think that I would like how it would look, but actually, I do. So this will work until I get a fancier one. Or this is the version I´ll stick to. I can tell you - I can´t get any solution cheaper than this!

I´m doing so many trades right now, both on ATCs I´ve already made, and on some I haven´t even made yet. So yesterday I spent the afternoon and then commercial breaks, painting ATCs for trades. I made another Narnia "Wardrobe", two "Sparky" and a word of wisdom. Then, sometimes in the middle of the night, I realised what my next card for the Narnia swap would be - the lamp post in the books (which is "planted" in the first book), which actually can grow taller. So this morning I made another interactive ATC, so much fun, I think.

 
 

I´m doing a Narnia swap on atcsforall.com (I know, I´m swapping and trading a lot of ATCs now, but since sending one envelope costs about $2, and one of my previous swapping packages cost about $50, including shipping, I don´t feel too guilty about it), so I did some Narnia painting last night and this morning:

 
I knew the queen had to be zetti, and the wardrobe doors had to be possible to open.


And of course an Aslan. I wanted to paint only his face, zetti style, but apparantly I can´t draw lion faces...

I have an ATC made for me by my 3-year-old nephew, I really like it!


Can you tell that he really enjoyed the glitter pens?

I almost signed up for a Funky Cats swap, but decided to trade them instead, this is the result of yesterday´s late night painting:

 
 They are all for trade!

I couldn´t resist doing a Marimekko swap at atcsforall.com, since Marimekko is one of my favourites when it comes to fabric. This is what I did yesterday:

I´m doing an owl swap over at ATCs for all, so I have been painting owls for the last few days. You could choose between making (and getting) three or six cards, and after seeing all of the beautiful owl ATCs, I made six, since I want to get as many as possible (can you detect just a bit of greed there?), and then I made a couple of extra as a gift for the hostess.

 
As you can see, I went for three a bit more realistic, and three more retro looking ones. Painting realistic is difficult! I really need to practice a lot more!


As an hostess gift, I did one of Owl from Winnie the Pooh, and one of an old Greek coin, featuring the owl of Pallas Athena.

Can you tell that I love owls? By the way, I went to the Zoo last Saturday, guess where I spent the most time?

Yesterday and today I made a whole little pile of ATCs:

 


I made a painting for my sister, and then I wanted to make some similar, but in ATC size. The boy in purple and green is for a trade with a friend, the other ones are for up for trade.



This was originally a drawing I made back in ´95, and I figured it would work well as an ATC. It´s based on the myth about Yggdrasil, and since the first letter of my name is a M, that´s what it became.

And then I made the remakes of my monochrome Alice´s, which I wrote about in my last post. Busy indeed!

I really liked my monochrome Alice ATCs ("Green Cheshire", "Yellow Drink" and "Pink Hatter"), and it tore my heart to send them away. So today, I made new ones, as well as a purple flamingo, and eventually I will make prints out of them. It does feel good to feel happy about your own creations - usually I´m my worst critic. Not that unusual, I think.

 "Purple Flamingo"

 New versions of the traded cards + flamingo.